The Days of the King

by Filip Florian

  The times continued to hurry, streaking like rabbits or soaring like hawks. In the same way, for example, as the new liberal coalition. First it emerged from the egg, then grew strong and learned to flap its wings in the house of Mazár Pasha (who, to cap it all, was in fact a Briton of Dutch origins, Sir Stephen Bartlett Lakeman, former commandant of a death squad in South Africa, a veteran of the Crimean War, and a mercenary in the service of the sultan), wheeled for months and months high in the political sky, stalking its prey, before swooping ruinously upon Lascar Catargiu, toppling him from power. In April, after five years without significant crises or reversals, the Principalities were left with a strange council, which the newspapers christened the Ministry of the Sword, because it was led by General loan Emanuel Florescu and included another two career soldiers, with braided bands down their trousers. It was also in April, after the life of the first transition cabinet had proven more ephemeral than a summer midge, that the ever present Manolache Costache Epureanu took his seat in the prime minister's chair. In July, he was obliged to get up again and leave for his estate, where he could better bear the summer heat. Taking his place at the head of the government, after some three thousand five hundred days, bitterly long days during which he had dreamed of nothing else, was the 'Vizier.' And Ion C. Brătianu lived up to his nickname. After winning renown for having supposedly taken part in a plot against Napoleon III, after accompanying a captain of dragoons from Berlin to Bukarest to see him elevated to the throne, after striving to manipulate the prince from behind the scenes, after being the first minister of war not to hold the rank of officer, after thundering and fulminating against the sovereign from the benches of the opposition, after plunging himself up to his neck in the ridiculous Ploesci revolution, after donning sackcloth and ashes and kissing the hand he had tried to bite, and many other provocative escapades and episodes, he had got it into his head at the height of the dog-day weather, when the year 1876 blazed like an oven, to attempt from his position as president of the council to arrest all twelve conservative former ministers, headed by Catargiu, and to see that their wealth was confiscated, on the grounds that they had squandered the country's finances. Carol was vehemently opposed, indicating that after ten years of rule he had had enough of circus shows and vendettas. But unprecedented turmoil had arisen not only to the north but also to the south of the Danube. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the Christians had risen up against the Ottoman yoke, Serbia and Montenegro had declared war on the Porte (Prince Nikola having won a few pallid victories), the uprisings in the Bulgarian lands had been smothered under the yatagans of the Turkish ba^buzuks, while in Istanbul itself, at the very heart of the empire, Sultan Abdülaziz had been driven out of the Dolmabahçe Sarayı, and three months later the usurper, Murad V, had been declared insane and banished from both throne and harem. The new padishah, Abdülha-mid II, his mind caught up in burning matters, such as Russia's threat to break off diplomatic relations and Great Britain's intention to convene a Balkan peace conference, closed his eyes or else paid no heed when on the banks of the Dîmbovitza, immediately after the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the enthronement of Carol I, medals with the head of the prince were cast and national decorations established, in defiance of the stipulations of the princely firman.

  By now the railroad traversed the Balota and Severin forests, and followed the course of the Danube as far as the western frontier at Vîrciorova, by the island of Ada-Kaleh, where it linked up to the Austrian railways and the sparkle of Vienna; it made the outline of the Principalities more prominent on the maps of the continent and fulfilled one of Prince Karl Ludwig's abiding obsessions. Then, as the great city labored to cast off its Turkish raiment, all kinds of changes were made, some merely a matter of airs and graces, such as Ishlik Makers Street becoming French Street, others radical, involving the demolition of old buildings and construction of new ones, in particular on the sites of a number of old monasteries that had been impoverished by the nationalization of the monastic estates under Cuza. At the whim of their modish new owners, Manuc's Inn was rechristened the Hotel Dacia, the Otel Oteteleşeanu became the Hôtel Frascatti, the Slătineanu Restaurant became the Capşa, after the brother confectioners, while the Church of Saint John the Great, founded by the boyar Preda Buzescu and rebuilt by Brîncoveanu, was razed to the ground with sledgehammers and pickaxes, along with its cells, stables, and outbuildings. Only the abbot's house was spared, into which was moved, after renovation, the Savings and Loans Bank. Not far away, at the eastern end of the boulevard across the road from the University, where Saint Sava Church had been reduced to a mound of rubble, there appeared a square with lanes and young trees, in one corner of which Grigore Şuţu, proprietor of the adjacent palace, built at his own personal expense hothouses with palm trees, cacti, and other never-before-seen plants, to match the pelicans, pheasants, and peacocks in his courtyard. And there, in the very center of the town, while sparse, yellowed leaves still hung from the branches of the trees, preparations were under way for the unveiling of the first statue in Bucuresci. It was November 1876, and the only sculptures people were familiar with were the stone crosses with Slavonic inscriptions that had been erected at crossroads to drive out evil spirits from the city's slum districts. And so the news of the twenty-foot-tall bronze monument was cause for general excitement. Reading the newspapers from cover to cover and sensing which way the wind was blowing, Herr Strauss had learned that it was to be an equestrian statue, fashioned by Albert Carrier de Belleuse, in Paris, portraying one of the voievods dear to the hearts of Wallachians, Mihai the Brave. The matter did not enthuse him in the least, perhaps because he had seen hundreds of statues in his life, not only on the Unter den Linden, but also in every small German town, in the churches if not in the streets, perhaps because of the indifference that had settled over him since the deceptive audience at the palace, perhaps because in that sour season, when he had emphatically understood that he was forty years old, he preferred to play with Sănducu or to chat with his friends than to be jostled by a crowd of gawpers. And on the eighth day of the month he would undoubtedly have idled around the house if Elena had not insisted that they go out together, buy some chrysanthemums, and join the curious onlookers hurrying to cheer the prince. For almost a week, his wife had been overwhelmed by the fever of her blood and maiden name, hoping with all her heart that Prince Carol would not refrain from firm, even warlike, action, which in the roiling turmoil of the Balkans would have been a breath of fresh air for Serbia. Karl Ludwig, as they saw him from the pavement by the university, through the headscarves, hats, and caps, through the fluttering handkerchiefs and flowers, bore himself with superb confidence. As the young nation did not yet have an anthem, he flawlessly saluted during the triumphal march intoned by the brass band. Then he stepped out in front of the guard platoon, gave a short nod to the diplomats, ministers, and generals, came to a stop before the monument concealed beneath veils of white canvas, grasped the ropes handed to him, tugged them and let the soft casing tumble, like a thin layer of snow. For a good few minutes, he listened to the gasps of the crowd and let them gaze upon the mounted voievod, towering atop his stallion from a massive marble plinth, upon whose sides were emblazoned the arms of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania. And all the people saw how the Unifier, in his cast-bronze form, wore a plumed cap, held the reins in his right hand and an axe aloft in his left, with a sheathed sword at his hip, while the tail of his slightly rearing steed was wind-blown even in the calm of that tranquil, breezeless morning. Then, in a solemn ceremony, in which Joseph detected something of the rhythm and ritual of the Potsdam officers' school, the sovereign handed new, sanctified battle flags to the thirty-two regiments of the army. In a kind of exaltation, the former Miss Duković deciphered the motto embroidered on the flags in gold thread, For honor and homeland, and later she clapped wildly, when, by chance, a snatch of the prince's speech reached her ears: "I am convinced that the time for courage has not passed..."

 
As he left the square, with his horse bridled to a walk, Karl Ludwig gave a start. Among the thousands of faces, his eyes had met the eyes of Joseph Strauss. They were still hazel. He smiled at him and, looking at the woman pressed to his shoulder, he raised his hand to the peak of his cap.

  Joseph and the prince did not speak until one year after that occasion, one year and three days, to be exact, when the darkness stretched like black water over the hills around Plevna, interrupted only by dwindling fires kindled from thistles, tree stumps, and cornstalks. Perhaps even then they would not have managed to talk at leisure, the two of them alone, if the prince, in his general's uniform and accompanied by a few adjutants, had not entered that afternoon the large, flimsy tent that served as a field hospital. Treading among the stretchers huddled on the ground, in the reek of blood, guts, and putrid puttees, beneath the groans and screams of the wounded, he espied the dentist at one of the operating tables, his shirtsleeves rolled up, that very dentist who had been so knowledgeable about enchanted teas. And the dentist, now busy with anything but incisors, molars, and canines, was at that moment pouring half a bottle of plum brandy down the throat of a wan infantryman, whose right leg, shattered by shrapnel from a shell, was oozing pus and had turned as yellow as a honeycomb. The dentist wiped his face with a towel, asked the orderlies to tie down the terrified soldier, raised the bottle to his own lips and took a slug, selected a hacksaw, and by the light of a sputtering lamp began to cut above the knee, well above, almost below the hip. Leaning against a wooden post, watching, Carol heard, in the brief pauses between the howls, how the canvas of the tent whooshed in the wind. He grew dizzy, and, emerging for air, thought the whooshing was like the swift wing beats of a flock of wild ducks. In the sleet outside, not seventeen hours since the slaughter around Rahova, he lit a cigar, the hundredth, and pretended not to notice the colonel behind him, who was doubled up and clutching his stomach. He let him throw up undisturbed near a wild rose bush. He gazed up at the gray clouds, the crescent moon flags on the ramparts, the rows of trenches mired in mud, the slumbering cannons, and the shivering outlines of the horses. He heard whoops and the strains of an accordion coming from the Russian positions (and he knew that they had just shared out the vodka ration), and he shuffled his damp feet and thanked God that they were still there, in their boots. He felt the glow of his cigar warming him; he smoked and waited for the amputation in the tent to be finished. And when it was over, Herr Strauss appeared, wearing a crumpled tunic, with the epaulettes of a major, and a crooked belt. His cheeks were pallid, unshaven for a week, there were blue circles under his eyes, and his hair was disheveled. He tried to salute, but when his fingers reached his temples, he realized that he was not wearing his cap and so refrained. He looked at the prince in a strange way, as though he both did and did not see him, and his eyes were as misty as the dusk. He was quick to answer all the prince's questions, not in German but in Romanian, but he avoided details and intimacies. He said no when the matter of a fine powder, good for infusions and delight, came up, he said yes when he was invited to take a glass of cognac at a quarter to ten, he shrugged when he was offered an escort for the journey through the night, and, at last, as the officers in the retinue were getting ready to mount, he, too, asked a question, in a hoarse voice, namely whether the prince was happy at having conquered that wretched redoubt, Rahova.

  That spring, there had gathered around Joseph, like moths to a flame, countless omens and occurrences presaging war, some known to him, others of which he was not aware. Elena, for example, had toiled for days on end to cut from cloth, stitch, and stuff with scrunched-up newspaper a little Turkish infantryman, no more than three feet tall, on which she traced a mouth with rouge and a nose, eyes, and eyebrows with charcoal, a soldier whom Sănducu daily stabbed with his sword, throttled in furious wrestling bouts, used as a target for his bow and arrows, and whacked over the head with the stick used for stirring maize porridge. That same month, April 1877, the crown council had been urgently convened. The Tsar's army had received permission to use the railroad to reach the front in the Balkans. General mobilization had been decreed, and a number of regiments had marched to the Danube. Bukharest found itself overrun by Russians, who seemed more numerous, more raucous, and more clinging than flies. The sultan's cannons had managed to bombard Braila, Cala-fat, Bechet, and Oltenitza. The Romanian artillery, in response, had rained cannonballs on the fortresses on the other shore. On the penultimate day of the month, after protracted vacillation, the Chamber had declared, with 58 votes for, 29 against, and 5 abstentions, a state of war against the Sublime Porte. In the madness that gripped the city, the dentist and the barber, while frequenting taverns, strolling at the fall of twilight, and drinking schnapps on the upper floor of the redbrick house, kept trying to get to the bottom of a particular question. In a period when patriotism wafted through the air along with the poplar fluff, when in churches, by crossroads, and at balls money was being raised for the troops, when volunteers were being lured with all kinds of promises, and when Princess Elisabeth herself had been caught up in the fervor, abandoning her poetry to set up a corps of nurses, Joseph Strauss and Otto Huer kept asking themselves whether they, as Germans, had done enough for the Principalities when they arranged that at the intersection of Lipscani Street and Boiangiu Lane the country's second statue should be erected, a plump nymph with bared shoulders, symbolizing commerce. The barber, who had paid very dearly indeed to avoid being called up, had felt blessed by heaven when the cream of the Russian army was billeted at the nearby şerban Voda inn. His shop was besieged daily, because those men, some wearing white tunics with pistachio-colored braids, many in boots as polished as glass, could not imagine letting more than a few hours elapse without tidying and pomading their mustaches, without shaving, without straightening their sideburns, without adjusting their hair to their liking. Thanks to this good fortune and the money that had fallen into his lap out of the clear blue sky, Otto had hired three apprentices and had stationed on the street, under a shady canopy, three new chairs, equipped with oval mirrors and small enameled basins. Herr Strauss might also have rejoiced in the new patients that had appeared overnight, but the easily earned rubles left him cold. He felt gloomy when he saw so many officers in his surgery with sturgeon bones embedded in their gums, with remnants of endive stuck between their teeth, and with breath sweetened by alcohol. To his mind they all bode ill, like owls. They conjured up misfortune and catastrophe. They reminded him of Elena's heavy silences, Elena who did not ask him to go off to war, but demanded it of him with her sighs. And they made him think of the army's small number of medics, a thought that gave him white hairs and forced him to acknowledge that before becoming a dentist he had been a doctor and knew how to wield a scalpel. In her silent insistence, his wife never ceased to teach him a complex science, that of love, without resorting to charts of the heavens, telescopes, or compasses, as in astronomy, but instead to the art of gazing at the floor, blinking, turning down the corners of her lips, dressing in haste and undressing in stealth, kissing him sparsely and wearily, sometimes wearing the dress he liked best, the swishing one with the low-cut neck and flounces, leaving newspapers open at the pages praising volunteers to the skies, sighing for the fate of vanquished Serbia, and humming songs about heroes while she cooked or ironed. Furthermore, one Sunday morning, under her downcast, white countenance, as white as cream in early May, Sănducu had appeared carrying the ruddy calfskin bag, and had asked Joseph to sprinkle liquors on the dead soldiers to bring them back to life. Joseph said nothing and promised nothing. He caressed the lad, took the bag, tested its weight in his palms as though on a pair of scales, examined the faint traces of the letter'S, placed it on top of the wardrobe, and thought of his mother and sister. In the evening, Otto Huer made light of the whole scene, laughing at the idea of going off to the front. But the dentist could no longer tolerate jokes, and Otto had to go home early, together with Ritza. After Prince Carol had somberly and rhythmically read the decla
ration of Romanian independence, on May 10th, eleven years to the day since his elevation to the throne, giving tavern keepers, against their better instincts, occasion to unstop barrels of their best wine, women to sob uncontrollably, urchins to yell and break the windows of the caravanserai, dogs to bark in chorus, and men to get dead drunk, Joseph had allowed one more Sunday to pass, and then placed himself at the disposal of Davila, the doctor and general who headed the army's medical corps. And in the middle of July, when the Russians no longer crowded into Otto Huer's barbershop, but were beyond the Danube, harried by the Ottomans and riddled with fly and mosquito bites, demanding assistance from the troops of Wallachia, the upholsterer who had once replaced the yellow velvet on the dentist's chairs in the winter of 1869 rummaged through his workshop, opened the lids of trunks, rubbed his chin, and gave his apprentices an unusual task. He made them take from the chests all the scraps of old material accumulated over a lifetime, cram them into sacks and take them to the edge of Bucuresci by cart, to the shredding machine with its presses and cutters. Soon, as a distant rumble wafted from the southern front, the psalms of Siegfried's youth, inscribed on pieces of yellow velvet, had been transformed into lint for the soldiers' wounds and were soaked with human blood.